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Kusumoto Yoriko
Introduction Kusumoto Yoriko is a supporting character in the series Mouryou no Hako. Her friendship with Yuzuki Kanako makes her an unwitting part of a larger plot in the series. Appearance Yoriko is depicted as an ordinary-looking girl, with brown hair that she ties back in two long braids, and brown eyes. She is often seen wearing her school uniform, but outside of school, she generally wears a simple white blouse and knee-length skirt. Plot The first episode of the series is told from Yoriko's point of view. She states that she loved Yuzuki Kanako, before recounting her experiences with Kanako. She is shown staring at Kanako during class, but blushes and looks away when Kanako makes eye contact with her. When questioned on the Rokkasen ''by her teacher, Yoriko is unable to give a fully accurate answer, and is chastised by the teacher, but Kanako comes to her rescue. After class, Yoriko is asked by Kanako to walk home with her, to which she meekly agrees. Yoriko is shocked by the fact that Kanako, who is the most beautiful and intelligent of all the girls in the class, asked to walk home with her, and remains silent for the entire journey with Kanako. When Yoriko returns home, her mother, Kusumoto Kimie, is shown briefly, and it is hinted that Yoriko and her mother have a strained relationship. Yoriko's relationship with Kanako continues to grow and she becomes increasingly infatuated with Kanako, admiring her frequenting of posh cafes and reading of literature magazines, among other things. During one such cafe visit, Yoriko is questioned by Kanako on her knowledge of ''Tennin Gosui ''(Five Death Omens of an Angel). Upon seeing Yoriko's confusion, Kanako explains that an angel does not feel pain and hardship like humans do, but can still die, and the ''Tennin Gosui ''describe the omens of an angel's death. Kanako proceeds to describe the omens - withering of the anadem, soiling of the garments, sweat dripping from the armpit, dizziness, and the loss of happiness. This has a profound impact on Yoriko, who mentally likens the decaying angel to her mother. Yoriko returns home and finds her mother in front of the vanity once again touching up her makeup. Yoriko is shown to hate her mother for her vanity and shallowness, and wishes she died when she gave birth to Yoriko. Yoriko is also hostile towards Sasagawa, a close friend of her mother's who visits often, barely acknowledging his presence. The only time she responds is when Sasagawa gifts her a doll he made, and tells her that dolls are boxes in which the soul is stored. Yoriko seems to hallucinate the doll moving its eyes and mouth, and is shocked by this, dropping the doll in the process and breaking it, which causes her mother to reprimand her, but Yoriko runs out of the house. Yoriko runs until she stops to catch her breath, and coincidentally encounters Kanako. Kanako convinces Yoriko to dance with her in the moonlight, where they converse about moonlight and life. This brief encounter is halted when Kanako's guardian, Amemiya Noritada, arrives. However, Yoriko's nighttime walks with Kanako continue. In another cafe visit, Yoriko asks why Kanako is willing to spend so much time with her, citing her family's relative poverty, her lack of intellect and her father's absence, to which Kanako replies that she and Yoriko are each other, and that they are each other's reincarnations and previous lives. Yoriko is enamoured by this concept, and feels even closer to Kanako as it suggests she is irreplaceable. She then has a thread tied around her wrist by Kanako, which Kanako calls the charm of fate and advises Yoriko to never remove it, and Yoriko obeys. Yoriko's close friendship with Kanako worsens her relationship with her mother, who feels that Kanako is strange and Yoriko should stay away from her. Yoriko gets into a heated conflict with her mother over this, insisting that Kanako is her previous life, to which her mother responds by saying Kanako has poisoned her mind. Yoriko is angered by this statement, and screams at her mother that Kanako, unlike her mother, will not be soiled and will not age. She goes on to lament that she does not want to be old like her mother when she grows up, and runs away. Yoriko's mother chases after her daughter and warns that if she does not age, she will be an inhuman mouryou (evil spirit). This incident destroys Yoriko's relationship with her mother, and she never speaks to her mother again. During another nighttime walk, Kanako recounts some of her childhood to Yoriko, saying she had a sickly mother who hated her and screamed at her to die while trying to strangle her. Kanako says she lives with her sister, Yuzuki Youko, who is kind to her, but that she still recalls the experience with her mother. Kanako then proceeds to demonstrate the strangling on Yoriko, who does not resist, saying that she is willing to die if it is by Kanako's hand. Kanako squeezes tighter and tighter until Yoriko is on the verge of being strangled before letting go, saying that it was not the right moment. Kanako suggests that she and Yoriko go to a lake far away together to get away from everything, to which Yoriko agrees. On the third Friday night of summer break, Yoriko arrives at the train station where Kanako is waiting to go to the lake. Kanako is crying, which perplexes Yoriko, but she brushes it off when questioned by Yoriko. Kanako stands at the edge of the platform with Yoriko behind her, and Yoriko later notices a pimple on the nape of her neck. Moments later, Kanako is pushed onto the tracks by an unseen individual, who shoves Yoriko in the process, and is hit by the incoming train. Yoriko goes into a state of shock upon seeing Kanako hit by the train. She is unable to provide any constructive information to Detective Kiba when he questions her, but just cries and occasionally talks about trivial things, such as the pimple or them going to the lake. Unwilling to leave her by herself, Detective Kiba brings Yoriko to the hospital where Kanako is undergoing emergency surgery. She subsequently witnesses the interactions between Detective Kiba, Yuzuki Youko, Amemiya Noritada and Masuoka Noriyuki. Masuoka interrogates her aggressively at one point, to which Yoriko responds by crying. Later, Yoriko's mother and Sasagawa arrive at the hospital, and Yoriko's mother severely chastises her for spending time with Kanako at night. Infuriated by Yoriko's unresponsiveness, Yoriko's mother is about to slap her when she is stopped by Detective Kiba, who reprimands Yoriko's mother for being uncontactable during an emergency. They then leave the hospital once Kanako's surgery ends and she is transferred. At one point, Yoriko visits the cafe that Kanako once patronised, and reads one of the literature magazines. When reading the magazine, she seems to remember a detail about the night Kanako was injured. She then informs Detective Kiba about her recollection, who brings her to the research facility where Kanako is being treated. Yoriko claims that she was standing diagonally behind Kanako on the platform, when a man dressed in black and wearing gloves appeared suddenly from behind a pillar and pushed Kanako onto the tracks, shoving Yoriko in the process. Yoriko then pleads with Kanako's guardians to let her see Kanako, and they agree. When Yoriko sees Kanako, she is so relieved that she begins speaking to Kanako very excitedly, and the police intervene to stop her from agitating the patient. Shortly afterwards, Kanako is abducted. Yoriko continues her daily life without Kanako, but now finds it mundane and foolish, save for visiting the cafes that Kanako used to frequent. Her newfound aloofness invites the hostility of her schoolmates, who believe that she is trying to imitate Kanako's demeanour and now perceives herself to be better than them. Yoriko is also irritated by her mother's growing devotion to Onbako-sama, a self-declared exorcist who deemed their house to be unclean and infested with a mouryou. Yoriko watches as Onbako-sama, on the invitation of her mother, performs rituals on their house to supposedly cleanse it of the mouryou, and is further annoyed by her mother donating all her funds to Onbako-sama and boarding up their house. At some point, Yoriko encounters Kubo Shunkou, the fantasy novelist, who makes an appointment with her to "draw her". Later on, she encounters Sekiguchi Tatsumi and Enokizu Reijiro at her house, who introduce themselves as friends of Detective Kiba. Yoriko is suspicious of Sekiguchi, but finds Enokizu to be trustworthy. She gives brief answers to their questions about her mother, before excusing herself to keep her appointment with Kubo. She meets Kubo at the same cafe she and Kanako used to visit, and he takes her to his house, after which she goes missing. Later on, when Detective Aoki visits Kyogokudou, he receives a phone call which informs him that Yoriko's arms were found, making her the newest victim in the Dismemberment Murder serial killings. When Detective Aoki and his colleague go to Kubo's house to try and apprehend him but fail, Aoki discovers Yoriko's torso placed in a box as the other body parts in the dismemberment cases were, thus confirming her death. At the end of the series, Kyogokudou reveals that Yoriko was actually the one who pushed Kanako onto the train tracks. Being of a weak mind and deeply infatuated with Kanako, Yoriko viewed Kanako to be perfect and therefore witnessing Kanako crying at the train station as well as the pimple on her neck tore apart her perceived reality, which rattled her to the point that she was driven to the attempted murder of Kanako. Sekiguchi then questions why Yoriko would make up the specific character of a man clad in black and wearing gloves who pushed Kanako, to which Kyogokudou replies that the character was likely created by her subconscious, as before she gave that particular testimony, she had read one of the literature magazines Kanako often read, in which one of Sekiguchi Tatsumi's novels, "Vertigo", was published. The novel described an assassin dressed all in black who is actually based on the real-life Kyogokudou, and hence Yoriko derived her testimony from that. Kyogokudou cites how Yoriko possessed knowledge of concepts which were not taught at her educational level, such as ''Tennin Gosui, and hence concluded that she must read literature magazines. Yoriko was also revealed to have told Kubo Shunkou about Mimasaka Koushirou's research facility. It is thus shown that it was partly Yoriko's actions that catalysed the events of the series. Personality Yoriko is initially shown to be a meek and relatively ordinary character. She is rather easily influenced, as shown from how she believes everything that Kanako tells her and puts Kanako on a pedestal. She also harbours a degree of malice towards her parents and others for their behaviour, as seen from how she wishes death on her mother, and this inherent malice is what leads to her "possession by the toori-mono" and her pushing Kanako onto the train tracks. She is also somewhat delusional, convinced in her belief that Kanako was perfect and that Kanako was her previous life and reincarnation. Relationships Yuzuki Kanako: Yoriko's classmate and best friend. Yoriko practically worshipped Kanako and thought of her as a perfect individual. Her pushing Kanako onto the train tracks did not seem to stem from hatred, but rather the realisation that Kanako was not actually perfect. Kusumoto Kimie: Yoriko's mother. The two have an extremely strained relationship, despite Kimie's genuine care and concern for her daughter's well-being. Their relationship is further fractured by Yoriko's idolisation of Kanako and Kimie's friendship with Sasagawa. Unnamed father: Yoriko's father left the family when she was young, and hence she never had a familial relationship with him. Category:Characters